Topic: CNSNews.com
CNS is moving beyond merely promoting right-wing talking points as "news" and becoming a full-fledged media arm of Mitt Romney's campaign. Several CNS articles published after the debate served to reinforce Romney's talking points, attack President Obama, and even elucidate on issues it felt Romney didn't sufficiently cover during the debate.
An article by Fred Lucas does the latter:
During Wednesday night’s presidential debate, when Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney explained why wanted to repeal and replace Obamacare, he cited four reasons, including because it is “expensive,” it “cuts $716 billion” from Medicare, it includes an “unelected board” that could determine what kind of medical treatments people get, and it “killed jobs.”
He did not mention as one of the reasons he would like to repeal Obamacare the fact that if mandates that all Americans must purchase health insurance, a mandate that conservatives have argued is unconstitutional and that only survived a Supreme Court challenge earlier this year when Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberals on the court and said the government had the authority to order people to buy things as long as it did so under the Constitution’s General Welfare Clause not the Commerce Clause.
Yes, pointing out that Romney failed to mention the individual mandate is the entire point of Lucas' article. He did concede, however, that an individual mandate exists in the health care plan Romney spearheaded as Massachusetts, though he fails to mention that the individual mandate had longtime support from Republicans before it was opposed by them in the wake of Obama's health care plan embracing it.
Then, Melanie Hunter claimed that Romney "corrected the president" on his claim that Romney supports a plan that calls for a $5 trillion tax cut. In fact, Romney made no correction; he simply denied that he has such a plan. But Romney arguably does -- the Tax Policy Center interpreted that Romney's call for a 20 percent tax rate reduction and other tax cuts he has called for add up to about $5 trillion over 10 years. Hunter fails to mention the TPC report; instead, she documents all the instances in which Romney countered Obama on the $5 trillion tax cut claim.
An article by Susan Jones dismissed Obama's claim that companies can "a [tax] break for shipping jobs overseas" because "the full story" is that it refers to a tax deduction for business moving expenses that doesn't discriminate on where the business moves to. Jones quoted a senator criticizing a bill that would disqualify business operations moved overseas for the tax break.
Another article by Lucas essentially calls Obama a liar for claiming that Americans can keep their health insurance under Obamacare because "the law’s regulations on contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs may compel some people to change their health insurance plans or drop them entirely." Of course, any such insurance change is not a mandate of Obamacare, it's a personal decision.
And Christopher Goins attacked Obama for claiming that Social Security is "structurally sound" because "Social Security’s Board of Trustees said in their 2012 annual report that the program faced $8.6 trillion in 'unfunded obligations.'"
How does CNS' blatant shilling for Romney square with the 501(c)3 tax-exempt status of its parent organization, the Media Research Center? Perhaps CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey can explain that to his readers.
